After being shut for almost seven months due to coronavirus-induced lockdown, Peru’s best-known tourist site Machu Picchu finally opened on Monday. But for just a single visitor–a Japanese man who had been stranded in the country because of the pandemic.
Notably, the 26-year-old Japanese instructor namely Jesse Katayama had been stuck in Peru since March when he bought a ticket for the tourist site just days before the country declared a health emergency. He had only planned to spend three days in the country but got stuck there for months owing to flight cancellations.
However, he made a special request to local tourism authority to allow him the site once and they agreed!
“He had come to Peru with the dream of being able to enter. The Japanese citizen has entered together with our head of the park so that he can do this before returning to his country,” Minister of Culture Alejandro Neyra said in a virtual press conference.
“The first person on Earth who went to Machu Picchu since the lockdown is meeeeeee,” an elated Jesse Katayama posted on his Instagram account.
“I thought that I wouldn’t be able to go, but thanks to all of you who pleaded with the mayor and the government, I was given this super special opportunity,” he wrote in Japanese on his Instagram account.
Meanwhile, the stone ruins of Machu Picchu will be reopened for national and foreign tourists in November with 30% of its normal capacity of 675 people per day.